Sunday

Sunday has never been my favorite day of the week. It's always seemed like a fake weekend day, one filled with homework and chores and early bedtime and looming deadlines and the stress of the week ahead. My usual Sunday sentiment is harried and slightly melancholy: Another weekend is coming to a close, and I'm surprised at how quickly it flew by.

While I often spend Sunday mornings at church, I've never followed the biblical practice of treating Sunday as a day of rest. Surely, people in biblical times didn't have to deal with grocery shopping, kids' homework, laundry, cleaning, paying bills, and getting caught up on work email.

Maybe she's born with it, maybe it's stress.

This morning, I attended a seminar at my gym about stress. As the presenter started listing off the health conditions caused or exacerbated by stress, I felt like she was describing my personal list of woes: Weight gain, belly fat, carb cravings, feeling tired, irritability, mood swings.

I haven't felt like myself for the last few months. The best version of me is positive, health-conscious, and happy. I still remember what it's like to feel that way, and I can bring bursts of it, but lately I have felt duller, tired, like a fog is hanging over me. Sometimes, I chalk it up to the cold weather and lack of sunshine. Sometimes, I blame external situations like work and busy schedules. "I'll feel better when ___ is over," I tell myself.

Hoarders, Electronic Edition. Episode 2: Flash Drives

Have you ever been to somebody's house, and they took out a box of random photos and started flipping through them, telling you non-sequiter stories about people you don't know and places you've never been?

Tonight's blog is the digital equivalent of that. Sorry. It's been a long week.

Instead of a box of photos, I present you with random discoveries from old flash drives found around my house.

The 10 most (and least) understandable things about being a kid

Kid things that I can completely relate to

1. Being so tired that everything is hard, nothing can make me happy, I just want to cry, but I absolutely cannot go to bed

2. Having so much fun with my friends that I never want them to go home

3. My Little Pony

4. Why we should always buy the unlimited ride pass and arrive at the amusement park as soon as it opens

Called to Blog?

For the past 5 weeks, I've been attending a seminar entitled "Called to Life." Along with a few women from my church, I've been spending two hours a week exploring the question of what God is calling me to do and be.

I signed up for the class because of a word I saw somewhere in the course description: vocation. I was in the midst of a job change, and I thought "Aha! This may give me clarity on how to manage this."

The first week of class, I learned that vocation is about much more than career. It comes from the Latin vocare, "to call," as in "to hear the voice of God."

My Warm-Weather Bucket List

There's a fresh blanket of snow on the ground. Tonight's forecast is in the single digits. I can't take it anymore, so I've started a list. Here are 20 things I'd like to do while the weather is warm because, eventually, it will be. I promise. 

1. Shoot off some of the fireworks we have left over from last July 4.

2. Run around Christmas Lake. Run a 10k in August. Run, and keep running until I feel as healthy as I was last summer. 

Fever Dreams

I'm almost halfway through my blogging project, and I refuse to let a stomach bug and a fever knock me out now. Perhaps if I power through this, it will be like cresting a hill on a challenging run, and then I will enjoy a quick descent the rest of the way.

When I was a kid, I remember being sick a lot. If somebody had a cold, I would catch it, along with bonus symptoms, like asthma and tonsillitis. I cuddled under my big fluffy Polish down comforter and watched game shows: The Price is Right, Hollywood Squares, Bumper Stumpers, Win Lose or Draw (Why were they in Burt Reynolds' living room?). My mom made me hot, sweet tea, and my friends stopped by with special folders containing the homework I had missed. My dad brought home paper pharmacy bags with cough syrup and Sucrets and the occasional round of antibiotics, giving me bedside lectures on the differences between viruses and bacteria.